Free Time Tools

Which one do you actually need?

Two of these measure time that has passed and two shape time that is about to. The date difference calculator counts days, weeks and months between two dates, which sounds trivial until you need it for a contract term or a visa window and discover that whether the end date counts changes the answer by one. The hours calculator adds up a timesheet in hours and minutes without the decimal confusion that makes 7:45 look like 7.45.

The countdown timer and the Pomodoro timer are the same mechanism with different intentions. A countdown is for a deadline that exists anyway. A Pomodoro timer invents one, in twenty five minute blocks, because a deadline you can see behaves differently from a deadline you merely know about.

What this category will not do for you

These timers live in a browser tab, so they stop being reliable the moment the tab does. A background tab gets throttled by every modern browser, a sleeping laptop stops counting, and a closed tab takes the timer with it. For anything with a real consequence, set a second alarm on your phone.

The calculators also work in plain calendar arithmetic. They do not know about your public holidays, your working week or your time zone changes, so a date difference is a count of days rather than a count of business days.

Frequently asked questions

Does the date difference include the end date?

The count is exclusive by default, so 1 March to 8 March is seven days. Contracts and notice periods frequently mean the inclusive count, which would be eight. It is worth checking which one the document intends, because the difference of one day is exactly the kind of thing that gets argued about later.

Why does 7 hours 45 minutes not add up as 7.45?

Because time is base 60 and decimals are base 10. Forty five minutes is 0.75 of an hour, not 0.45, so adding 7.45 and 7.45 in a spreadsheet gives 14.90 where the real answer is 15 hours 30 minutes. Keeping hours and minutes separate avoids the error entirely.

Will the timer keep running if I switch tabs?

It keeps the correct time, because it works from the clock rather than by counting ticks, so returning to the tab shows the right remaining time. What is not reliable is the alert firing on schedule, since browsers throttle background tabs heavily and a sleeping computer stops everything.